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 A client's friend died of heart-attack at 40 years of age. A fellow golfer mentioned the other day that his colleague in Australia, inspite of being a vegetarian and enthusiastically following his rigorous fitness routine, had cancer and died at 45. A friend's sister was advised a heart bypass surgery at 42. My sister was diagnosed with Diabetes at 35. What do you think is happening here? Each of the above diseases is referred to as a 'Lifestyle' disease. Our species, it seems, has self-created these diseases because of our modern past-paced, high-stress Lifestyle. What is Stress? The dictionary defines stress as a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances. Sure, one can blame the corporate world for creating stressful work environments with long hours and high pressure targets, causing so many young people to succumb to loss of productivity and creativity, or diseases, or death; depending upon the severity of stress. Though, that would be giving away one's power to the environment; as if to say we have no choice in the process. If we were to have a choice, if we were to be responsible for our own health and well-being; what would that mean? How do we deal with stress powerfully so that it does not lead us into dis-ease? Is there something else we would need to deal with, besides stress; so that right till we breathe our last, we have a great quality of life, high fitness levels without having to manage any age-related or any other diseases, our mental faculties are in top order and we continue to contribute joyously and massively through our work that we are passionate about. Or, is it that whatever we may do, we will still fall prey to diseases because that is the natural cycle for our species? If that were the case, should we then simply saunter along life with unhealthy habits just because it is easy to live with unhealthy habits instead of working hard to embrace growth habits? Let us walk together to find answers to some of these questions. Fundamentally, it is important to understand that if our intention is health and wellness, then we have to consider five bodies instead of the one that we see - physical, energy, emotional, mental and spiritual. Working on only the physical body is not a sustainable way to create health and well-being because the physical body houses the other four bodies. Any dis-ease in the inner four bodies will show as symptoms at the level of the physical body. Therefore, to be effective in creating long-term health, fitness and joyous well-being, it is wise to not only work inwards from physical to energy to emotional to mental to spiritual body, but also to work outwards from spiritual to mental to emotional to energy to physical body while also working simultaneously at all levels. Let us walk further to explore how. 1. Physical Body: The physical body is directly impacted by what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, what fitness regimen we have to ensure that the physical body is fit, agile, flexible till our very last moment. Yes, it is possible. My karate coach's super coach is a young 73 years black belt Dan 10, which is the highest level of recognised expertise. He is as yet actively coaching students from across the world to mastery in Karate. The physical body is indirectly impacted by the fitness levels of the other four bodies. If they are not healthy, dis-ease shows up as symptoms at the level of the physical body. Should it not be our business to determine what kind of diet, exercise routines and fitness regimens for the other four bodies would keep us at the highest levels of energy, giving us an elite athlete's fitness level instead of creaking joints and cracking organs as we add days to our life? 2. Energy Body: Do an honest Energy Audit to self-assess which people, places, animals, things, habits, food, work, chores etc. energise you and which drain you. Also, assess how much time you spend in total on what energises you and what drains you. What are your learnings and insights from this exercise? What do you now understand that you hadn't understood before? What needs to change? A deeper self-inquiry will reveal that there's a specific emotion attached to each of the above and it is the energy of the emotion attached to each one of the above that is either draining or energising us. Would it not contribute to you to do an Energy Audit with raw honesty to understand what is depleting your energy and what is growing your energy; and systematically removing that from your environment that is not contributing to your growth? What would become available to you if you could see how your energy has an impact on your physical body and learn how you can grow your energy levels? 3. Emotional Body: Trauma is severe and lasting emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience. The emotional body holds trauma memories, stored at the cellular level. Our emotional body is a container of: i. all the emotions that we have ever experienced since our birth and did not process because it was too painful. It was so painful that it seemed easy to push them under the carpet and our emotions ran away like little kids to hide in different parts of our body. ii. all the painful emotions of our ancestors (our parents, grandparents and even further up in the family tree) locked up in our DNA; painful emotions that they could not process in their lifetime or did not know how to. iii. all the painful emotions from our previous lifetimes that we did not have the awareness, wisdom and understanding to process and dissolve at that time. Creating fitness at this body requires us to connect with our deepest emotions and find ways to access emotions lying hidden to finally face them, embrace them, viscerally forgive all the actors in that memory including ourself and find inner peace, that now allows us to connect authentically with ourself and all beings. I have worked with clients who had relationship issues because they never experienced their mother or father's love and appreciation as they were growing up, clients who had abundance issues because they did not experience themselves worthy in response to a humiliating incident in childhood which the conscious mind does not remember but the sub-conscious mind is still burning up with that emotion of 'not being good enough', clients who had self-esteem issues inspite of being super successful but all that money and success does nothing to fill the emptiness inside because the emptiness is way back from the past, clients who are leaders in their industry but are lonely and know not how to love or receive love because they did not receive love as they were growing up. Would it not be worthwhile to explore how to heal the emotional body to the highest levels of happiness because our blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart-disease etc. is likely to have its source at this level; besides the dis-ease at the emotional level making it difficult for us to create success, positive impact and prosperity with ease and grace, while having it all? 4. Mental Body: We are rational, logical beings. Without engaging the intellect in the whole game of creating the highest level of health, fitness and well-being, we will find the journey an arduous one because of the nature of the mind. It's default state holds limiting thought patterns, has a tendency of either lamenting about the past or worrying about the future, has deep aversions and cravings, and runs in million directions simultaneously. This default state creates continual upheaval in the emotional body and comes in the way of accessing our power to fulfil our intentions and realize our dreams. Health and well-being at the level of the mental body means purifying the mind so that there's stillness, tranquility, equanimity, clarity, purposeful focus, joyous inspiration, acceptance and non-judgement within. This unleashes the unlimited creative power of the mind to give us enhanced productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity and innovation. As the mind purifies within, we begin to effortlessly create success, positive impact and prosperity in the world outside. How would it be to be on such an adventure to cross the frontiers within to create a whole new reality in alignment with our greatest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self? 5. Spiritual Body: The spiritual body seeks purpose, growth to our highest self and transformation from evolutionary fear to compassionate love for oneself and for all beings.The health and wellbeing at the level of the spiritual body means living with purposeful passion, making a massive difference through our work; living with a visceral experience of love, gratitude, reverence, integrity, mastery consciousness, joy, abundance; with a full-blown access to our inner Power to Create™ to fulfil our highest intentions and realise our greatest dreams which may have seemed scary, unimaginable, impossible before. What would being on such a Hero's Journey to lead yourself and your business from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace make available for you? Love for you as you are right now and reverence for the undeniable greatness within you waiting to emerge in its fullness to make our world a happier, healthier, peaceful place, j.
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 Imagine I passed you a bottle of water, which you gave to someone else. Will the content of the bottle undergo a transformation just because it changed hands from me to you to someone else? In the same way, who you are at home, at work and everywhere else does not change as you move one context to the other. The mask may change but the results we create is not the function of the mask but who we authentically are. In other words, the whole of who we are is our Being which is the sum total of who we are physically, emotionally, intellectually (/ mentally) and spiritually. The habits at each of these four bodies define the outcomes we create in our lifetime. To access the full power to make a dent in the Universe by fulfilling on our purpose this lifetime, by fulfilling our highest intentions and realising our greatest dreams with impact and velocity is an outcome of first creating health and well-being by inculcating Growth Habits at each of these 4 bodies - physical, emotional, intellectual / mental, spiritual. If we are not effective at home with kids who we are not able to inspire to live from their inner genius, their innate greatness, their inner light that they are meant to shine the world with; then Leadership Depth is missing where we are, irrespective of the big business outcomes that we may have created at workplace. If Leadership Depth were present, we would make a much bigger impact in the world not only outside our homes but also in our homes, not only outside us but inside us than we are currently creating; with deep joyous fulfilment, happiness, peace, love, connection, harmony, grace and freedom in our hearts. In that sense, our children are our walking talking mirrors. They shout at us and not listen to us. We know we have shouted at them and others; and not listened to them and others at home and at work. They don't do their homework on time and get poor marks; we know that we are not really inspired to challenge ourselves to be a life-long learner, living with the experience of the joy of learning. They waste their time on screen instead of reading books or playing in the park; we know we spend way too much time on the screen instead of reading books and playing a sport to learn, grow and evolve ourselves. They are getting over-weight and we know we are not at the peak of our own health. They fight with each other and we know we parents have no friendship between us. They prefer eating a chocolate to a banana, a pizza to a roti, french fries to fresh, colourful vegetables; and we know we don't have healthy eating habits. They love their colas over drinking refreshing water and we know we love our tea, coffee, alcohol over coconut water. There isn't a better Leadership training ground than home. We have to do 10 times of what we expect the kids to do. We want to stop hitting the snooze button if we want our kids to wake up at our first call. We want to practise unconditional love and acceptance; irrespective of what the kids do or don't do, irrespective of what the kids say or don't say, irrespective of how the kids are and how they are not; if we want our children to grow up with self-esteem and feel worthy of love. We no longer can use rewards and punishments to control them, to get them to do what we want them to do because they will learn to crave for the rewards and learn aversion for the punishments, instead of learning what we really want them to learn - to be kind, loving, generous, honest, truthful, to have childlike trust & faith in the Universe and to live with gratitude, joy, reverence and mastery consciousness. We want to learn how to connect with them at the deepest level so that they want to share their dark, fearful secrets and impossible, unimaginable dreams with us so that we can coach them to embrace their fears and joyously realize their greatest dreams in deepest communion with their highest self, making a huge difference in the world as they are meant to. If we learn to be a Leader at home, we will know how to inspire our team members to stand tall with self-esteem, connect authentically with themselves and others in the organisation with compassionate love for each other, become masters of their domain and bring in such levels of self-generated 'being of service' that our customers experience themselves to be a part of our organizational family and become our fervent brand ambassadors that sales will no longer be about chasing customers and numbers. Our teams will begin to function independently to our highest vision and collaborate with each other to create a business impact unimaginable and impossible before. All that we would need to do then is to get out of their way as they lead our business from good to great, from a fairly successful business to a massively transformational market leader far ahead of other businesses in the industry. Wishing you such joyous and fulfilling success. Love and Reverence, Jyoti.  My American Boss at Amex told us a very interesting story from his life, that I still remember. I am so deeply impacted by the profoundness of it, even after 10 years, that have probably narrated it 100 times to my clients and even to my kids. I am going to share this story with you today because in it lies the answer to the question - How to Be Happy? In all my years of coaching and being coached, the only answer that I found to the question - How to be happy? - is in being able to love. I have discovered that the real question isn't what can I do to be happy. The real question is what can I do to love more expansively - love myself; love my work; increase the depth of my love for my spouse, kids, parents, sisters, friends; feel loving kindness towards all fellow beings at home, at work, everywhere. In strengthening our hearts and increasing our capacity to love gives us the only access to happiness that there is. There is no other way to find happiness. Find love within yourself and you will experience happiness in that moment. So, how do you love? That's where Brian's story comes in. He belongs to a family of devout Christians. At 16 years of age, he goes to the community church to spend his summer vacation to serve under the Father he adores and admires. He gets to share his room with another 16-year old, John. Brian is most displeased with John and complains to Father - "Father, John is the dirtiest boy that I have ever met. He smells because he doesn't take a bath, neither does he change his clothes. He throws the banana peels on the floor, doesn't make his bed, keeps chewing gum the whole day and sticks them to his bed after he is done chewing. Please, can I have another room-mate?" Father gives a long kindly look to the 16-year old Brian and replies - "Brian, will you do what I tell you?" "Of course, Father" "Will you make John's bed everyday and throw the peels in the dustbin?" Brian hesitates but his love and reverence for the Father wins over his distaste for what he was asking him to do. "Yes, Father. I will do it, if you say so." After a week, Father comes looking around for Brian and asks him - "How are things with John, Brian?" "A little better, perhaps. I would still love it if you would change my room-mate, Father. I can't sleep because he smells so bad. He doesn't even brush his teeth. The old chewed gums have nearly covered the whole bed side." "Will you do what I ask you to do, Brian?" "Yes, Father." "Will you ensure John brushes his teeth and takes a bath every day? Would you remove the old chewed gums from his bedside and wash his clothes daily, Brian?" A long silence but love and admiration for Father is so strong that Brian acquiesces, though half-heartedly. Three weeks later, Father comes around looking for Brian to find him happier than he ever has seen him since the month started. "How are things with John, Brian?" Brian beams, "Oh Father, we have become such good friends." You may have discovered the answer to the question. Yes, the only access to experience love is to be of service. In all her wisdom, Nature created babies to be helpless beings; unable to take care of themselves. Parents have to feed them, bathe them, clean them when they mess-up their nappies, teach them and so much more. That is why parents love their babies so immensely. That is why it is important for the father as well as the mother to be fully engaged in taking care of the baby because the baby needs love from both parents. Have you noticed that as the kids become more self-sufficient and we are less of service to them, the quality of our love is not as powerfully deep as when they were helpless little babies, totally dependent on us to take care of them? It takes all our leadership depth to keep the love going strong and keep the anger, resentment, irritation, upset at bay :-) You must have figured the answer to the questions we raised in the beginning of our conversation: What can I do to love more expansively? a. Love myself - be of service to yourself by nurturing and nourishing yourself. b. Love my work - be of service to your customer community. c. Increase the depth of my love for my spouse, kids, parents, sisters, friends - be of greater service to them. d. Feel loving kindness towards all fellow beings at home, at work, everywhere - In our culture, we have 2 powerful words - Daan and Seva. Daan means to give away part of your wealth for the well-being of the communities you are a part of. Seva means to be of service to the communities that you belong to. Interestingly, various cultures around the world have the spiritual practice of tithing - which is giving away one-tenth of your income as an offering to God or for the works of mercy. How beautiful it is that we have no dependency on anyone or anything outside of ourselves to be happy. All we need is to be in the act of being of service and in that very instant, love spreads through our body and we experience happiness. It is a well-researched fact that being happy expands our mind while being in the grip of negative emotions (anger, upset, frustration, irritation, resentment, hopelessness, resignation, cynicism, sadness, boredom, lethargic etc.) shuts down our mind. When would you be more effective? When would you have greater access to your inner creativity and ability to innovate solutions that make a difference? When would you be more productive? When would you deliver better performance? When your mind expands or when it is shut down? Wishing you the joy of the journey to connect to your Higher Purpose, to live from there and making the choice to be happy moment-by-moment. Love and reverence, Jyoti.  Did you know that the food you eat impacts not only your productivity and performance, but also your creativity and ability to innovate? Imagine a car which suddenly sputters and stalls. You call an expert, a service engineer, who opens the hood, identifies the faulty component, cleans and repairs it. After few months, the car stalls again. This time the service engineer proceeds to replace the component and puts you on a monthly maintenance plan to keep the car in running order. After few months, the car fails again and now another component is showing signs of wear and tear, atleast that's what you are told. Imagine the enormous cost you would have to bear on account of this - financial, time, emotional, mental, physical. What if you subsequently find out that the source of the problem was not the ageing of the components but the sub-standard petrol you were using unknowingly? That's exactly the case with our body. Modern medical science does not teach our expert doctors how food impacts the body, which food can cause havoc in our body and which food can heal us naturally. All major technological advances in the medical field has been in the area of pills, devices and surgery, which the doctors are experts in. The pills, devices and surgery don't heal the source of the problem, instead they treat the symptoms in our body like our service engineer above was doing to the car. Don't you think heart disease, diabetes, obesity, auto-immune diseases, cancer, Alzheimer etc. would impact a person's effectiveness, productivity, performance, creativity, innovation, joy, happiness and fulfilment? What if we cause these debilitating diseases 3 times in a day on a daily basis - at breakfast, lunch and dinner? I work with my clients to remove barriers that come in the way of professional and personal excellence for them to lead themselves to realise their impossible, unimaginable dreams towards joyous fulfilment. Every year I pick up a new area to learn, grow and evolve in to support my clients to fulfil on their life’s mission. This year I picked up nutrition to study covering scientific research from the west; and the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda and Naturopathy from India. It's been an amazing journey to uncover the simple truth lying hidden under all the complexity of living. The China Study is part of this journey and it has totally shifted the way I eat. I was troubled by recurring blisters on my tongue for over a year which the doctor-recommended vitamin supplements weren’t helping. I didn’t act upon his advice to get tests done to figure out what was causing them. The interesting thing is that when I shifted what I was eating based on my new understanding of a healthful diet, my blisters vanished on their own and haven’t recurred for over a month. The China Study was a massive undertaking jointly arranged through Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. This project surveyed a vast range of diseases and diet and lifestyle factors in rural China and, six years later, in Taiwan. More commonly known as the China Study, this project eventually produced more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between dietary factors and disease. What made this project especially remarkable is that, among the many associations that are relevant to diet, so many pointed to the same finding: people who ate most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease. Even relatively small intakes of animal-based foods were associated with adverse effects. People who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. The director of this study, Colin Campbell shares the outcome of the most comprehensive study of nutrition ever conducted through this book of the same name, along with outcomes from various other scientific researches done on nutrition in the US. Sharing few excerpts from the book for you to start your journey to reclaim perfect heath and wellness to live a full life, personally and professionally: 1. Dietary change can enable diabetic patients to go off their medication. 2. Heart disease can be reversed with diet alone - and in doing so, reducing animal protein is more significant than reducing saturated fat. 3. Breast Cancer is related to levels of female hormones in the blood, which are determined by the food we eat. 4. Consuming dairy foods can increase the risk of prostate cancer. 5. Antioxidants, found in fruits and vegetables are linked to better mental performance in old age. 6. Kidney stones can be prevented by a healthy diet. 7. Type 1 diabetes, one of the most devastating diseases that can befall a child, is convincingly linked to infant feeding practices. 8. The above findings demonstrate that a good diet is the most powerful we have against disease and sickness. 9. I noticed … a research report from India that had some very provocative, relevant findings. Indian researchers had studied two groups of rats. In one group, they administered the cancer-causing aflatoxin, then fed a diet that was composed of 20% protein… In the other group, they administered the same amount of aflatoxin, but then fed a diet that was composed of only 5% protein. Incredibly, every single animal that consumed the 20% protein diet had evidence of liver cancer, and every single animal that consumed a 5% protein diet avoided cancer. It was a 100 to 0 score, leaving no doubt that nutrition trumped chemical carcinogens, even very potent carcinogens, in controlling cancer. 10. We found that not all proteins had this effect. What protein consistently and strongly promoted cancer? Casein, which makes 87% of cow’s milk protein, promoted all stages of the cancer process. What type of protein did not promote cancer, even at high levels of intake? The safe proteins were from plants, including wheat and soy. 11. I did not rest on the findings of our animal studies and the massive human study in China, however impressive they may have been. I sought out the findings of other researchers and clinicians. … These findings show that heart disease, diabetes and obesity can be reversed by a healthy diet. Other research shows that various cancers, autoimmune diseases, bone health, kidney health, vision and brain disorders in old age (like cognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer’s) are convincingly influenced by diet. 12. Most importantly, the diet that has time and again been shown to reverse and / or prevent these diseases is the same whole foods, plant-based diet that I had found to promote optimal health in my laboratory research and in the China Study. The findings are consistent. 13. Yet, despite the power of this information, despite the hope it generates, and despite the urgent need for this understanding of nutrition and health, people are still confused. …I will tell you why. The distinctions between government, industry, science and medicine have become blurred. … The result is massive amounts of misinformation, for which average American consumers pay twice. They provide the tax money to do the research, and then they provide the money for their health care to treat their largely preventable diseases. 14. He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man? - Hippocrates, the father of medicine (460-357 BC) 15. The most dramatic recent finding is that very close to 100% of heart disease can be prevented and even reversed by a healthy diet. 16. If nutrition were better understood, prevention and natural treatments were more accepted in the medical community, we would not be pouring so many toxic, potentially lethal drugs into our bodies at the last stage of disease. 17. It is time to shift our thinking towards a broader perspective on health, one that includes a proper understanding and use of good nutrition. 18. So, what is my prescription for good health? In short, it is about the multiple health benefits of consuming whole, plant-based foods, and the largely unappreciated health dangers of consuming animal-based foods, including all types of meat, dairy and eggs. 19. Eating the right way not only prevents disease but also generates health and a sense of well-being, both physically and mentally. … eating the right way would largely obviate the enormous costs of using drugs, as well as their side effects. Fewer people would need to wage lengthy, expensive battles with chronic disease in hospitals over their last years of life. 20. … a mountain of compelling research shows that plant protein, which allows for slow but steady synthesis of new proteins, is the healthiest type of protein. 21. The results of these, and many other studies, showed nutrition to be far more important in controlling cancer promotion than the dose of the initiating carcinogen. … Furthermore, a pattern was beginning to emerge: nutrients from animal-based foods increased tumour development while nutrients from plant-based foods decreased tumour development. 22. Good health is about being able to fully enjoy the time we do have. It is about being as functional as possible throughout our lives and avoiding disabling, painful, and lengthy battles with disease. 23. Blood cholesterol is clearly an important indicator of disease risk. The big question is: How will food affect blood cholesterol? In brief, animal-based foods were correlated with increasing blood cholesterol. With almost no exceptions, nutrients from plant-based foods were associated with decreasing levels of blood cholesterol. Several studies have now shown, in both experimental animals and in humans, that consuming animal-based protein increases blood cholesterol levels. … In contrast, plant-based foods contain no cholesterol and, in varied ways, help to decrease the amount of cholesterol made by the body. All of this was consistent with the findings from the China Study. 24. The strong association of a high-animal protein, high-fat diet with reproductive hormones and early age of menarche, both of which raise the risk of breast cancer, is an important observation. It makes clear that we should not have our children consume diets high in animal-based foods. 25. Animal protein intake was convincingly associated in the China Study with the prevalence of cancer in families. 26. Diet and disease factors such as animal protein consumption or breast cancer incidence lead to changes in the concentrations of certain chemicals in our blood. These chemicals are called bio-markers. As an example, blood cholesterol is a bio-marker for heart-disease. We measured six blood bio-markers that are associated with animal protein intake. … Every single animal protein related blood biomarker is significantly associated with the amount of cancer in a family. 27. Dietary fibre is exclusively found in plant-based foods. … The results showed that high-fibre intake was consistently associated with lower rates of cancers of the rectum and colon. High-fibre intakes also were associated with lower levels of blood cholesterol. Of course, high-fibre consumption reflected high plant based food consumption; foods such as as beans, leafy vegetables, and whole grains are all high in fibre. 28. The colours of fruits and vegetables are derived from a variety of chemicals called antioxidants. These chemicals are almost exclusively found in plants. … Free radicals are nasty. They can cause our tissues to become rigid and limited in their function. It is a bit like old age, when our bodies become creaky and stiff. To a great extent, this is what aging is. This uncontrolled free radical damage also is part of the processes that give rise to cataracts, to hardening of the arteries, to cancer, to emphysema, to arthritis, and many other ailments that become more common with age. But here’s the kicker: we do not naturally build shields to protect ourselves against free radicals. As we are not plants, we do not carry out photosynthesis and therefore do not produce any of our own antioxidants. Fortunately, the antioxidants in plants and animals work in our bodies the same way they work in plants. It is a wonderful harmony. The plants make the antioxidant shields, and at the same time make them look incredibly appealing with beautiful, appetising colours. Then we animals, in turn, are attracted to the plants and eat them and borrow their antioxidant shields for our own health. Whether you believe in God, evolution, or just coincidence, you must admit that this is a beautiful, almost spiritual, example of nature’s wisdom. 29. Complications such as heart arrhythmias, cardiac contractile function impairment, sudden death, osteoporosis, kidney damage, increased cancer risk, impairment of physical activity and lipid abnormalities can all be linked to long-term restriction of carbohydrates in the diet. 30. … there is mountain of scientific evidence to show that the healthiest diet you can possibly consume is a high-carbohydrate diet. … Fruits, vegetables and whole grains are the healthiest foods you can consume, and they are primarily made of carbohydrates. 31. … individuals can achieve their genetic potential for growth and body size by consuming a plant-based diet. 32. Everything in food works together to create health or disease. 33. At the end of the day, the strength and consistency of the majority of the evidence is enough to draw valid conclusions. Namely, plant-based foods are beneficial, and animal-based foods are not. Few other dietary choices, if any, can offer the incredible benefits of looking good, growing tall, and avoiding the vast majority of premature diseases in our culture. 34. When used for stable disease, bypass surgery, angioplasty and stents do not address the cause of heart disease, prevent heart attacks or extend the lives of any but the sickest heart disease patients. 35. We now know what is true: a whole food plant based diet can prevent and treat heart disease. 36. These studies document the fact that vegetarians consume the same amount or even significantly more calories than their meat-eating counterparts, and yet are still slimmer. … A plant-based diet operates on calorie balance to keep body weight under control in two ways. First, it discharges calories as body heat instead of storing them as body fat, and it doesn’t take many calories to make a big difference over the course of a year. Second, a plant based diet encourages more physical activity. And, as body weight goes down, it becomes easier to be physically active. Diet and exercise work together to decrease body weight and improve overall health. 37. Type 2 diabetes, the most common form, often accompanies obesity. 38. In dietary studies involving the Adventists, scientists compare “moderate” vegetarians to “moderate” meat eaters. … Compared to meat-eaters, the vegetarians had about one-half the rate of diabetes. They also had almost half the rate of obesity. 39. All of these findings support the idea that both across and within populations, high fiber, whole plant-based foods protect against diabetes, and high fat, high-protein, animal based foods promote diabetes. 40. … eating a plant-based diet lowered their insulin medications. 41. Another group of scientists at the Pritikin Centre achieved equally spectacular results by prescribing a low-fat, plant-based diet and exercise to a group of diabetic patients. Of forty patients on medication at the start of the program, thirty-four were able to discontinue all medication after only twenty-six days. 42. Unfortunately, misinformation and ingrained habits are wreaking havoc on our health. 43. … breast cancer is primarily caused by the same nutrition that elevates risk for other cancers - a diet lacking in whole, plant-based foods. 44. … a plant-based diet leads to a less severe hormone crash and a gentler menopause. 45. … there are two types of carbohydrates: refined and complex. Refined carbohydrates are the starches and sugars obtained from plants by mechanically stripping off their outer layers, which contain most of the plant’s vitamins, minerals, protein, and fibre. This “food” (regular sugar, white flour etc.) has very little nutritional value. Foods such as pastas made from refined flour, sugary cereals, white bread, candies and sugar-laden soft-drinks should be avoided as much as possible. But do eat whole, complex carbohydrate containing foods such as unprocessed fresh fruits and vegetables, and whole grain products like brown rice and oatmeal. These unprocessed carbohydrates, especially from fruits and vegetables, are exceptionally health promoting. 46. … every doctor should tell every man with prostate cancer to stop consuming dairy immediately and embrace a whole food, plant based diet. 47. … a whole food, plant based diet may be an incredibly effective anti-cancer medicine. 48. In the case of Type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the pancreas cells responsible for producing insulin. This devastating, incurable disease mostly strikes children, creating a painful and difficult experience for young families. What most people don’t know, though, is that there is strong evidence that this disease is linked to diet and more, specifically, to dairy products. The ability of cow’s milk protein to initiate Type 1 diabetes is well documented. … The greater the consumption of cow’s milk, the greater age prevalence of Type 1 diabetes. In Finland, Type 1 diabetes is thirty-six times more common than in Japan. Large amounts of cow’s milk products are consumed in Finland but very little is consumed in Japan. 49. We not only have evidence of the danger of cow’s milk, we also have considerable evidence showing that the association between diabetes and cow’s milk is biologically plausible. Human breast milk is the perfect food for an infant, and one of the most damaging things a mother can do is to substitute the milk of a cow for her own. 50. A recent study showed that American women aged fifty and older have one of the highest rates of hip fractures in the world. The only countries with higher rates are in Europe and in the South Pacific (Australia and New Zealand) where they consume even more milk than the United States. … those countries that use most cow’s milk and its products also have the highest fracture rates and the worst bone health. … It was found that a very impressive 70% of the fracture rate was attributable to the consumption of animal protein. … We have had evidence for well over a hundred years that animal protein decreases bone health. 51. … a 1968-1973 UK study (reports) a stunning relationship between animal protein consumption and the formation of kidney stones. 52. Professor W G Robertson (from the Medical Research Council in Leeds, England) published findings showing that, among the patients who had recurrent kidney stones, he was able to resolve their problem simply by shifting their diet away from animal protein foods. 53. These two eye conditions, macular degeneration and cataracts, both occur when we fail to consume enough of the highly coloured green and leafy vegetables. In both cases, excess free radicals, increased by animal-based foods and decreased by plant-based foods, are likely to be responsible for these conditions. 54. … there is a good science to show that thinking clearly well into our later years is not something we need to give up. Memory loss, disorientation, and confusion are not inevitable parts of ageing, but problems linked to that all-important lifestyle factor: diet. … The seven studies mentioned above all show that one or more nutrients found exclusively in plants are associated with a lower risk of cognitive decline in old age. … the combination of a diet high in animal-based foods and low in plant-based foods raises the risk of Alzheimer’s. 55. Supplements will not lead to long-lasting health and may cause unforeseen side effects. 56. … one of the biggest health hoaxes of all time: the nutrient supplement industry. … It is not that all these nutrients aren’t important. They are - but only when consumed as food, not as supplements. Isolating nutrients and trying to get benefits equal to those of whole foods reveals an ignorance of how nutrition operates in the body. 57. … we now have clear evidence that the hoped-for health benefits of nutrient supplements are not forthcoming. … the vitamin supplement industry has nothing to do with science and everything to do with marketing - nothing to do with the health for the many and everything to do with wealth for the few. 58. There are virtually no nutrients in animal-based foods that are not better provided by plants. … plant foods have dramatically more antioxidants, fibre, vitamins, and minerals than animal foods. In fact, animal foods are almost completely devoid of several of these nutrients - but they have much more cholesterol and fat. … the fat and protein of nuts and seeds are different: they are more healthful than the fat and protein of animal foods. 59. Genes do not determine disease on their own. Genes function only by being activated, or “expressed”, and nutrition plays a critical role in determining which genes, good and bad, are expressed. 60. Nutrition can substantially control the adverse effects of noxious chemicals. … like genes, the activities of these chemical carcinogens are primarily controlled by the nutrients that we eat. … nutrition primarily determines whether the disease will ever do its damage. 61. In humans, we have seen research findings showing that a whole-food plant-based diet reverses advance heart disease, helps obese people lose weight, and helps diabetics get off their medication and return to a more normal, pre-diabetes life. 62. Those who feel good about themselves are more likely to respect their health by practicing good nutrition. 63. Furthermore, it turns out if we eat the way that promotes the best health for ourselves, we promote the best health for the planet. By eating a Whole-Food Plant-Based diet, we use less water, less land, and fewer resources, produce less pollution and inflict less suffering to our farm animals. 64. My recommendation is that you try to avoid all animal-based products.There are 3 excellent reasons to go all the way: a. First, following this diet requires a radical shift in your thinking about food. It’s more work to just do it halfway. b. Second, you’ll feel deprived. Instead of viewing your new food habit as being able to eat all the plant-based food you want, you’ll be seeing it in terms of having to limit yourself, which is not conducive to staying on the diet long-term. c. Third, you will, within a month or so, perhaps a little more, actually break the physiological addiction that we acquire from eating large amounts of fat and refined carbohydrates. 65. Why haven’t you heard this before? … The entire system - government, science, medicine, industry, media and academia - promotes profits over health, technology over food, and confusion over clarity. 66. Doctors have virtually no training in nutrition and how it relates to health. 67. The problem with doctors starts with our education. The whole system is paid for by the drug industry, from education to research. 68. … the only type of research that is funded and recognised is research on drugs. Research on the causes of disease and non-drug interventions simply doesn’t occur in medical education settings. 69. … but it’s something more than just money. It may also be the intellectual threat that the patient should be in control, and not the doctor; that something as simple as food could be more powerful than all the knowledge of pills and high-tech procedures: it may be the lack of credible nutrition education in medical schools; it may be the influence of the drug industry. Whatever it is, it has become clear that the medical industry … is not protecting our health as it should. Wow, the book shook me with the simplicity of its message and the extensive scientific findings put together to hold to light the truth of its message. I had become a vegetarian 19 years ago, when I started practising yoga. I not only no longer found any taste in eating dead animals but also the fact of having dead animals on my plate put me off - intellectually and emotionally. I continued with eggs for a little while but the vision of chicks didn’t let me continue for long. The idea of giving up milk and milk products was a little more difficult. I finally gave it up on 10-Oct-18 this year after I read an article about Virat Kohli becoming a Vegan. I followed it up with more research which brought me to this book. Before this book, choosing to eat only plants was just a personal whim of mine, more out of not wanting to harm other beings. After reading this book, I woke up to the severe health impact of being any other way. I could not help but inspire my kids, husband and parents to choose a vegan lifestyle with my new understanding of how the food we eat impacts our health and therefore, the quality of our life. Sharing information is my responsibility. What you do with it is totally your choice, as it should be. Who to be and what to do can only come from within and cannot be thrust upon from outside, if it has to sustain for the long-term. Wishing you the joy of physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual health and well-being to realize your greatest dreams in deepest communion with your highest self. Love and reverence, Jyoti. Further Reading / Viewing: 1. These 14 elite athletes are vegan — here's what made them switch their diet 2. Indian Cricket Captain Virat Kohli Goes Vegan 3. Milk: A Silent Killer by Dr N K Sharma (Distinguished Naturopath) 4. How Not to Die (Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease) by Dr Michael Greger (Founder of NutritionFacts.org) 5. Other authors to explore: Dr John McDougall, Dr Roy Swank, Dr Caldwell Esselstyn Jr, Dr Dean Ornish 6. Movies: Fork over knives, Plantpure Nation, Cowspiracy 7. TEDx Talk by Philip Wollen - Ethics in meat-free world |
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